A Light in the Dark
by Exceeds Expectations
Summary: "Knowing there's someone to take care of you makes it a lot easier to fight," she says, and her fingers brush against your cheek. "There. All better." And she is always so, so gentle. /NevilleHannah during DH. He is always so broken, and she is always trying to fix him. First Place in Montley's Title Swap II Competition!


**A/N:** For the Title Swap II Competition, where I was given the title and Neville. So have some cute-ish NevilleHannah :D

* * *

She always does this.

It's sweet and kind and scarily intimate, but she does it nonetheless. She knows how much you hate it, how it makes even the smallest things seem that much scarier, but she dabs at your wounds with soft wool and warm water, bandages your swollen wrists, heals your cuts and scrapes as best she can and she is always so, so gentle.

"Why do you do this?" you ask her once. She presses the wool against your eyes, careful as anything, and smiles.

"Knowing there's someone to take care of you makes it a lot easier to fight," she says, and her fingers brush against your cheek. "There. All better."

Your face still tingles with her touch as you watch her leave.

* * *

Alecto Carrow's voice is so very low and cruel, and yet it carries above all else.

The other students sit in silence. Some tremble with suppressed anger, some with barely concealed fear. All eyes are on you, always you, and you feel the blood pound through your body.

"You're nothing but a coward, boy," she sneers, narrowing her dark eyes, disgust twisting her lip. "Don't you want to fight for yourself, fight for what you are?"

"Fight who? My friends? And for what? So you can lord yourself over the Muggles and make yourself feel _superior_?"

"My dear, dear boy..." she murmurs. You watch as her lips pull back, as her mouth breaks into a sick, overtoothed, shark's grin. "We _are _superior. If only you weren't so noble..."

"I will never be on your side," you say. "I don't fight wars to lose."

"Can't you see, boy? Are you that thick?" she asks, voice breathy and teasing. "Potter...has given up. When will you learn, Longbottom? When will you understand that we have _already won_?"

You smile, feeling the pull of the cut on your lip as it threatens to crack. "You haven't. You know you haven't."

"Look around you. Who's in charge here?"

"We are," you whisper, putting all the menace and hatred and warning you can into those two words. You know who surrounds you; friends. People who are closer than _family_, people you've come to understand and trust and love. "Of course we are."

She laughs. A throaty cackle, smoky and spiteful . "You? You're nothing but a bunch of naughty children. And _you_, Longbottom? A leader? You're nothing. Nothing but a _coward._"

You are still, but the adrenaline that runs through your veins, the erratic beat of your heart, the twitch of your muscles, all serve to make you feel as if the world is rushing past you.

"And what are you, eh? A grown woman, terrorising children? Never heard anything more cowardly in my life."

She gets violent after that. And you are almost able to block it out, to forget the pain, and try to remember the feather-light touches of soft cotton and warm, steady fingers on your skin.

* * *

"You needs to stop antagonising them, Neville," she chastises, as she tends to you once more. She wipes the blood from your lips gently. You flinch, pulling away from her just a little. "Sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you."

"You didn't," you murmur. "_She_ did. You just keep – keep making everything better."

Her eyes settle on yours, such a soft brown, and you feel a warmth in your chest as she blushes. She is so very pretty.

"I'm just making sure you aren't completely battered," she says quietly. "I just want to make sure you're safe."

"I wouldn't be. Without you, that is. I'd be a wreck."

"More of a wreck than you are now?" she says, holding out the bloody bandages in her hands pointedly.

"Definitely. You make everything seem a bit less scary, you know," you say, and your voice has fallen even below a whisper. She leans forward slightly, catching the words on your breaths as they fall.

"When things get really dark around here," she says, and just like you, the words are nothing more than shallow breaths, "I just think of you and what you keep doing. You're the only light we have, Neville."

You lean forward, so that you are almost nose to nose. It feels as if the whole world has tilted on its axis, as if you have fallen here by accident but stayed on purpose; nothing has ever felt more right than the ghost of her breath on your skin.

"Thank you," you whisper. Her eyes flick to your mouth, and you know what she is thinking, what she wants.

"It doesn't hurt that much," you lie, and she chuckles and grabs your face and kisses you anyway – but gently, taking care not to hurt your split lip or the grazes on your cheek.

She is always so, so gentle.


End file.
